Another glorious Sunday morning read thank you Heather. I grew up in the south of Scotland with it's mysterious landscape and dark history - both past and recent. I definitely resonates that it shaped my belief in the world being a dark, gothic fairytale (my Dad firmly believes to this day that Tolkien must have found his Middle Earth in the Borders!) so I found this piece quite moving & emotional.
I grew up in the Borders too! I know exactly what you mean about the landscape, I was always really struck with how much history happened on those hills - what they must have witnessed over the centuries
I haven't, because I'm sure they must have heard this critique before. Plus I don't want to give my opinion undue prominence; I'm sure just as many visitors think it's perfectly fine. But then maybe that's cowardice!
I’m livid about the celebration of male chaos over female creativity in the home of the Brontes above all, reducing those amazing artists to empty dresses and jewellery ffs. Hope you wrote a stinking comment in the visitors book xx
I was raised in Penistone, read Wuthering Heights when I was 16, wrote my undergraduate dissertation on WH, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It’s the other half of the post-industrial landscape for me - and interesting that the former pitheads in South Yorkshire are being rewilded in a way that is not dissimilar to what lies beyond them. Impossible not to have been shaped by it.
Yes to all of this. I grew up a little further north, in the desolate colliery gap between Huddersfield and Wakefield - and also with no visits to Haworth; and no understanding that anyone from that area could possibly ever have written a book. I wonder what a difference it might have made had someone taken me to Mytholmroyd and read me some Hughes.
That’s a really good point about the foregrounding of Branwell, who may have been an unfulfilled genius but equally may have been a spoiled brat (or even both).
For me, a child in the 60s, there’s one dark association above all in the Pennine Moors, specifically Saddleworth Moor, and that’s the Moors Murders. I can remember at primary school in Bowdon (Altrincham) being given a solemn warning in assembly not to take sweets from strangers and never to get in a car with someone you didn’t know. I didn’t understand at the time; it was years later that I made the connection and it chilled me to the bone.
I’ll take issue with one point, about not hearing Northern accents in cultural contexts. I mean, the Beatles…
Another glorious Sunday morning read thank you Heather. I grew up in the south of Scotland with it's mysterious landscape and dark history - both past and recent. I definitely resonates that it shaped my belief in the world being a dark, gothic fairytale (my Dad firmly believes to this day that Tolkien must have found his Middle Earth in the Borders!) so I found this piece quite moving & emotional.
I grew up in the Borders too! I know exactly what you mean about the landscape, I was always really struck with how much history happened on those hills - what they must have witnessed over the centuries
I love and relate to this immensely. I'm from South Manchester and now live at the edge of the Peak District in Macclesfield.
I think you should send the Brontë museum this piece. Or have you already messaged them?
I haven't, because I'm sure they must have heard this critique before. Plus I don't want to give my opinion undue prominence; I'm sure just as many visitors think it's perfectly fine. But then maybe that's cowardice!
I’m livid about the celebration of male chaos over female creativity in the home of the Brontes above all, reducing those amazing artists to empty dresses and jewellery ffs. Hope you wrote a stinking comment in the visitors book xx
I was raised in Penistone, read Wuthering Heights when I was 16, wrote my undergraduate dissertation on WH, Jane Eyre and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. It’s the other half of the post-industrial landscape for me - and interesting that the former pitheads in South Yorkshire are being rewilded in a way that is not dissimilar to what lies beyond them. Impossible not to have been shaped by it.
Yes to all of this. I grew up a little further north, in the desolate colliery gap between Huddersfield and Wakefield - and also with no visits to Haworth; and no understanding that anyone from that area could possibly ever have written a book. I wonder what a difference it might have made had someone taken me to Mytholmroyd and read me some Hughes.
That’s a really good point about the foregrounding of Branwell, who may have been an unfulfilled genius but equally may have been a spoiled brat (or even both).
For me, a child in the 60s, there’s one dark association above all in the Pennine Moors, specifically Saddleworth Moor, and that’s the Moors Murders. I can remember at primary school in Bowdon (Altrincham) being given a solemn warning in assembly not to take sweets from strangers and never to get in a car with someone you didn’t know. I didn’t understand at the time; it was years later that I made the connection and it chilled me to the bone.
I’ll take issue with one point, about not hearing Northern accents in cultural contexts. I mean, the Beatles…